CHAPTER VII
EMANCIPATION
Slavery had caused the war, and as the months passed, the President and his advisers became more and more convinced that the emancipation of the negroes would go far to end it. On August 31, 1861, John C. Frémont, in command of the Western Department, issued a proclamation freeing the slaves of secessionists in Missouri, but the President promptly countermanded it.
TO JOHN C. FRÉMONT
[August 31, 1861]
Thy error, Frémont, simply was to act
A brave man's part, without the statesman's tact,
And, taking counsel but of common sense,
To strike at cause as well as consequence.
Oh, never yet since Roland wound his horn
At Roncesvalles, has a blast been blown
Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as thine own,
Heard from the van of freedom's hope forlorn!
It had been safer, doubtless, for the time,
To flatter treason, and avoid offence
To that Dark Power whose underlying crime
Heaves upward its perpetual turbulence.
But if thine be the fate of all who break
The ground for truth's seed, or forerun their years
Till lost in distance, or with stout hearts make
A lane for freedom through the level spears,
Still take thou courage! God has spoken through thee,
Irrevocable, the mighty words, Be free!
The land shakes with them, and the slave's dull ear
Turns from the rice-swamp stealthily to hear.
Who would recall them now must first arrest
The winds that blow down from the free Northwest,
Ruffling the Gulf; or like a scroll roll back
The Mississippi to its upper springs.
Such words fulfil their prophecy, and lack
But the full time to harden into things.
John Greenleaf Whittier.
The slaves were, however, from the outbreak of hostilities, declared to be "contraband of war," and not returnable to their masters. On April 16, 1862, the President approved a bill freeing the slaves in the District of Columbia and compensating their owners.